Evaluating the effects of living with contamination from the lens of trauma: a case study of fracking development in Alberta, Canada

ABSTRACT

Trauma, the experience of sudden, dangerous, overwhelming events that render victims powerless, is an apt description of many experiences with toxic contamination. Toxic contamination events nonetheless often have a number of characteristics in common that render such events unique forms of trauma, including the invisibility and ambiguity of threats, an association between the threat and sources of livelihood and identity and the absence of resources necessary for resolution and recovery. While environmental sociologists tend not to analyze toxic contamination from the lens of trauma, doing so may shed important insights into such events and their human and social consequences. The current study explores the toxic contamination experienced by local residents due to nearby hydraulic fracturing activities in rural communities in southern Alberta, a conservative, upper middle class agrarian region with strong links with the oil and gas industry. Residents describe acute impacts to their health, land, livestock and loved ones, but these traumas were then exacerbated by the failure of authorities to respond in a manner expected, and the corrosion of communities. Victims experienced complete upheaval in their beliefs, and for many their experiences with contamination and fears of future exposure have come to dominate their lives.

KEYWORDS:

• Toxic contamination
• fracking
• trauma
• energy
• risk

Introduction

Environmental sociologists have provided compelling evidence that toxic contamination can be distributed inequitably, is a violation of democratic principles, a source of community conflict and collective mobilization. Yet at its core, although less discussed, toxic contamination can be a source of trauma, and the manifestations of trauma interact with each of these processes that have been the focus of studies of toxic contamination. Viewing toxic contamination from the lens of trauma offers a deeper understanding of its impacts to human and community well-being. Environmental sociology can offer unique insights into the broader field of trauma studies, by drawing explicit attention to characteristics of environmental hazards that manifest as trauma, and the interdependencies between these characteristics and the personal and collective experiences of trauma. To date, however, a limited number of studies within environmental sociology have drawn attention to the traumatic elements of events such as toxic contamination. Fewer still draw on interdisciplinary inquiries into trauma from fields in which trauma is a prominent area of study, as a means of offering a more substantial conceptual understanding. As a result, several questions arise that this study explores, including: Do toxic contamination events generate experiences of trauma that are similar to other events readily identified as traumatic? How might cultural and political context interact with elements of environmental hazard in ways that amplify or attenuate the experience of trauma? Are there unique aspects of toxic contamination events that have implications for trauma recovery? Conversely, how might the experience of trauma have implications for political mobilization to confront the source of hazard?

In the current paper, I develop a framework for the study of toxic contamination through the lens of trauma, drawing primarily from trauma theory and practice as depicted by current work in psychoanalysis. Then I turn to the small but meaningful body of research in environmental sociology that incorporates trauma into analysis of toxic contamination. Following this, I provide the results of a qualitative case study of the social impacts of hydraulic fracturing in a rural region of southern Alberta, a Canadian Province that has been heavily dependent upon the extraction of oil and gas for much of its 112-year history. Staunch support for oil and gas has largely been a given in this region, a place Milnes and Haney (2017, 10) describe as a ‘site of acceptance’ (Malin 2015), ‘where advocacy for particular commodities becomes embedded in the social fabric of the community, despite the human harms that production of these commodities has brought to the community’. An important aspect of the context in which these impacts occurred, however, is the recent shift in extraction technologies in an industry that has been an integral part of southern Alberta’s social and physical landscape. As noted by an energy analyst I interviewed for this project, however, ‘the industry is on its last legs. … 93% of all the conventional oil has already been produced. Similar number for natural gas. It’s just the dregs’. The only means of accessing these ‘dregs’ – which take the form of shale and coalbed methane – is with hydraulic fracturing, associated with multiple environmental and health impacts described further below. Over 80% of new wells drilled in Alberta today are fracked (Alberta Energy 2016).

Two recent earthquakes attributed to fracking near Fox Creek, a small town in northern Alberta, topped 4.0 on the Richter scale – the threshold at which provincial regulations require that fracking operations must be stopped, although the stoppage was only temporary. Other consequences reported by my interviewees, that have received no equivalent regulatory response, include: water contamination; air pollution; accidental spills and the intentional spreading of contaminated solids onto agricultural fields and roads; human health impacts including hair loss, nausea, respiratory infections and rare cancers; losses of livestock, trees and crops, with some cattle producers reporting sick and dying cattle, stillborn calf births and reduced reproduction rates. Importantly, many impacts are highly localized. Depending on the migration pathways of pollutants in groundwater, some water wells become contaminated and others not, and residents living directly downwind from the stacks from which unwanted compounds like sour gas are burned off (flaring) can face acute health effects, while their nearest neighbours experience no such effects.

My findings are based on 12 open-ended interviews with a snowball sample of residents who have had personal experiences with the impacts of fracking near their homes. This research suggests that the experience of toxic contamination does manifest in the form of trauma. The direct sources of trauma for these individuals included the violation of bodies, land, livestock and loved ones. Victims experienced complete upheaval in their beliefs, and for many their experiences with contamination, and fears of future exposure, dominate their lives. The sociopolitical context served to amplify the scale of trauma experienced, however, as authorities deeply immersed in Alberta’s petrochemical economy failed to respond in a manner expected by the victims. Furthermore, the local cultural and economic connections to the energy industry interacted to facilitate the corrosion of community, at a time when victims needed community support the most, thereby hampering trauma recovery. Finally, specific features of this toxic contamination event intersected with the trauma experiences of residents in ways that were not only distinct from other forms of trauma, but also distinct from many cases of toxic contamination analysed previously by environmental sociologists.

Trauma

For a term used as commonly, even colloquially, as trauma is today, there is a striking diversity of academic definitions. Trauma, a Greek word meaning wound, had been used for centuries to refer to bodily injuries, and still is, but it began also to be applied to the mental/psychological realm late in the nineteenth century, anchored to a great extent in Freud’s work (Luckhurst 2008).

Within the field of trauma studies, there are some common conceptual threads to anchor one’s research, but also one notable point of ambiguity. This pertains to what becomes the central focus of empirical interest: the event itself, or the response to it? For Boulanger (9), this ambiguity ‘presents a hermeneutic conundrum signifying both an event and the reaction to which that event gives rise, [lending to] conflation of stimulus and response’. Boulanger narrowly defines trauma as an event in which one is confronted with one’s own death or that of a loved one (Boulanger 2007). Doctor and Shiromoto (2010, 276) similarly refer to ‘extraordinary life-threatening events’, while Figley adopts a slightly less rigid definition of trauma as any event that is ‘sudden, dangerous and overwhelming’ (Figley 1986). On the other end of the spectrum lie scholars such as Caruth, who, drawing on Freud, says what causes trauma, including both real and imagined circumstances, is not confrontation with death but a break in the mind’s experience of time; a lack of preparedness to confront a particular stimulus. In other words, ‘danger is recognized as such one moment too late’ (Caruth 2014, 22). Ruglass and Kendall-Tackett (2014, 4) elaborate, describing ‘when a person experiences an extreme stressor that negatively affects his or her emotional or physical well-being [that] can cause emotionally painful and distressing feelings that overwhelm a person’s capacity to cope’. Herman (1992, 33–34) also focuses on responses rather than events, noting that events become traumatic when they ‘overwhelm the ordinary systems of care that give people a sense of control, connection and meaning’.

Sociologist Jeffrey Alexander leans farther towards this constructivist end of the spectrum than many, critiquing the tendency to refer to events themselves as traumas, to which humans rationally respond, as a form of ‘naturalistic fallacy’ (Alexander 2012, 13). For Alexander, trauma is [solely] a sociological process: ‘events are not inherently traumatic. Trauma is a socially mediated attribution’, (ibid., 13) a characterization with which I tend to agree to an extent. While a strong argument can be made that a rape or a massacre is a trauma in an objective sense, in that it is difficult to conceive of any circumstances in which either would not be traumatizing to the survivors, the specific character of that trauma is shaped to a great extent by, for example, the age, sex, ethnicity and personal history of the victim, and his or her relationship with the perpetrator(s). The traumatic status of other events is more clearly subjective. The experience of surgery, for example, may be routine for an adult with a history of medical interventions, but may well be traumatic for a small child who does not understand what is happening or why. Toxic contamination events are more likely to fall in the latter category of ambiguity. Thus, for our sociological purposes, it is the socially constructed experience of events that matter. Just as an extreme weather event becomes a disaster in the social experience of it, events become trauma in the human and social experiences of them.

Leaning too far on either the realist or constructivist end of the spectrum, however, has its fallacies. Alexander is certainly right to challenge researchers who limit their gaze to a set of narrowly defined events. Particularly, given the tendency to focus on acute events – abrupt life-threatening situations – events that unfold in less dramatic fashion (as describes many creeping events like toxic contamination) but are equally consequential for the survivors may be overlooked. Alexander makes a clear case, as with the many psychoanalysts cited above, that what renders an event a trauma is how it is experienced: experiences that are shaped by social location, personal history, place attachment, social support structures and political-economic context. On the other hand, embracing Alexander’s socially constructed account too wholeheartedly has its own fallacies. To begin, neuroscientists and medical practitioners offer compelling evidence that trauma is not solely a social construction, providing physiological and measurable manifestations of trauma. Trauma is often associated with shock, for example, observed in enlarged pupils, raid pulse, sweating; neuroscientists point to the secretion of certain chemicals (cortisol), the activation of certain parts of the brain (e.g. the amygdala) and deactivation of others (hippocampus) (e.g. LeDoux 1996). Indeed, much recent neurobiological and psychoanalytic work has observed that the psychological and physiological realms are wholly interconnected (Luckhurst 2008; Damásio 2005[1994]). Most importantly, environmental sociologists have illustrated the importance of grappling explicitly with what Freudenburg and colleagues (1995) called the conjoint constitution of nature and society, confirming in multiple studies that environmental characteristics do indeed matter. Thus, while a sociological inquiry into trauma may pay exclusive attention to social processes of interpretation and response in trauma studies, an environmental sociological inquiry requires equal attention to the characteristics of the event itself, and the interrelations between event character and social response. As this case study shows, toxic contamination can take many forms, and those forms shape social interpretations, impacts and responses. As such, in the current study, I identify trauma by the nature of human and social responses to it, while recognizing that features of events themselves play a role in shaping those responses. In particular, I point to three types of responses broadly agreed upon in the literature as indications of trauma, including loss of agency, persistence of perceived danger and ontological insecurity.

Many scholars agree a key indication of trauma is a loss of agency, or the personal experience of being rendered abruptly powerless. Whether the source of trauma is an abusive partner or a natural disaster, the experience of trauma is the experience of a complete loss of agency, quite literally, as Levine notes, through the experience of ‘profound and lasting changes in physiological arousal, emotion, cognition and memory’, ultimately compromising one’s ability to function in personal and social relations, and ‘re-engage in life’ (Levine 1997, 28). Victims experience the abrupt loss of a sense of mastery over their lives, in the face of powers beyond one’s control. According to Herman (1992, 53), ‘one’s autonomy and dignity and sense of competence are taken away’. For Boulanger, a trauma survivor ‘has lost the capacity to experience a range of affects, of senses on which she could rely … [experiencing a] feeling of rupture from the self that existed before the crisis’ (14–15). Boulanger notes that many psychoanalysts, including Freud, equate the degree of helplessness felt by trauma survivors to a state of infancy. The ego is essentially shattered, eradicating the capacity for mounting a defence.

Research has also produced consistent observations of what can be described as persistence of perceived danger. Called ‘hyperarousal’, this refers to an omnipresent expectation of danger after a traumatic event has passed, which can manifest as deep-seated distrust (Van der Kolk 2003). Erikson (1998) observes hyperarousal, without naming it, among flood victims who appear ‘doomed to a good deal of anxiety… stripped of the illusion that they could be safe’ (161).

Less often discussed but important to toxic contamination events in particular, trauma can also induce what Giddens (1991) calls ontological insecurity. Ontological security emanates from normal daily routines and human dignity; the sense of order and continuity offered by familiar settings (Zhukova 2016). The elimination of confidence – that tomorrow will be similar to today, that our knowledge and beliefs are valid, that our institutions serve a purpose – is key to the eradication of that security (Giddens 1991). For Alexander (2012, 13), the security that is lost through the trauma experience ‘is anchored in structures of emotional and cultural expectations that provide a sense of security and capability. These expectations and capabilities, in turn, are rooted in the sturdiness of the collectivities of which individuals are a part’. Herman notes how our sense of safety and trust is acquired early in life and forms the basis of our systems of relationship and belief, but trauma can undermine these core belief systems and ‘cast the victim into a state of existential crisis’ (Herman 1992, 51). The state itself, and our ascription of legitimacy in it, is especially important to the maintenance of ontological security (Krolikowski 2008). Zhukova (2016, 335) describes the loss of ontological security among victims of the Chernobyl nuclear plant explosion, who had previously ascribed such faith in state authorities to ensure safety that an explosion was considered ‘incomprehensible’. Luckhurst (2008, 14–15) suggests that the very elevation of trauma to a prominent location in scholarship is a reflection of a growing collective ontological insecurity in contemporary society (although he does not use that term), rendering trauma pervasive today: ‘I see trauma as one of those distinctive “hybrid assemblages” that Latour suggests confront us in the contemporary world. Increasingly, we have to deal with “tangled objects,” imbroglios that mess up our fundamental categories of subject and object, human and non-human, society and nature’.

Recovery from trauma requires foremost the restoration of efficacy, requiring establishment of safety, remembrance and mourning and reconnection with ordinary life (Herman 1992). The opportunity to share the traumatic experience with others who acknowledge that experience is essential. Because the experience of and immediate reaction to trauma is to be silent/silenced, to experience a moment of dissociation with one’s physical, mental and emotional life, one of the most important aspects of healing is the opportunity to narrate one’s personal experience, and in effect integrate the trauma experience within a coherent life narrative, with an empathic and receptive social support network. But opportunities to do so are influenced by social norms, the social location of the survivor and sociopolitical context (Jirek 2017; Boulanger 2007).

The responses of members of victims’ families and communities, and local authorities, thus have a powerful influence on the recovery process. As noted by Herman (1992, 214), ‘the solidarity of a group provides the strongest protection against terror and despair, and the strongest antidote to traumatic experience’. Those same relations can exacerbate the trauma for victims, when members of the victim’s community respond with denial, betrayal and even hostility. This is particularly so when the perpetrator of a trauma is an individual or organization that enjoys a position of respect and authority within the community, similar to the trusting relationship between citizens and industry or government in resource-based communities (Herman 1992). In such situations, victims often choose to remain silent in order to maintain their connections to family and community. Most acutely, ‘the traumatized person is the most vulnerable of all [when] the person to whom she might ordinarily turn for safety and protection is precisely the source of danger’ (Herman 1992, 63).

Toxic contamination and trauma

The social impacts of natural and technological disaster have been a long-standing area of study in the environmental social sciences at least since Erikson’s (1976) seminal study of the Buffalo Creek flood. Much recent research on toxic contamination tends to focus on the political mobilization that can occur in response to those events (Auyero and Swistun 2008). While the emotional consequences of such events are often acknowledged, they have received comparatively little attention (Lockie 2016; Jacobson 2016). Lockie (2016, 234) encourages a new perspective on environmental injustices that compels such attention, however, describing them aptly as ‘acts of violence perpetrated on the bodies, minds and livelihoods of their victims’.

There is nonetheless important groundwork in previous literature, which validates trauma as an appropriate lens through which to analyse such events, and also the fact that toxic contamination offers unique circumstances with implications for how victims process such traumatic events. Freudenburg (1997) identifies such circumstances as ambiguity of harm, corrosive communities and sociocultural disruption. Ambiguity of harm refers both to the invisibility of contaminants themselves, and also the difficulties associating such contaminants to health effects. Communities become corrosive to the extent that certain responses received by victims from other community members (blame, denial, ostracism) in the aftermath of exposure engender a breakdown of community relations. Sociocultural disruption, akin to ontological insecurity, refers to a general decline in recreancy – confidence that authorities will behave in a manner expected of them – and civic trust – necessary elements to the maintenance of community-level social capital.

Freudenburg’s attention to corrosion in community relations warrants elaboration, particularly in the case of rural communities in which such relations and the community attachment they facilitate can play a particularly important role in social well-being. McMillan and Chavis (1986) describe four ways community attachment is demonstrated: sense of belonging; belief that one can have an impact on the community; feeling that the community can meet personal needs; and shared histories and emotional bonds with community members. Crowe’s (2010) study corroborates this framework, showing that an individual’s personal connections with other community members, and membership in local organizations, are positively associated with a sense of attachment to that community. Community attachment is a fundamental source of personal well-being, and the loss of that attachment – as would be experienced in the corrosive communities described by Freudenburg – would be highly deleterious to that well-being (see also Jacobson 2016). To compound matters, environmental contamination also involves disruptions in nature–society relations, in the form of degradation of landscapes to which rural community residents may be just as intimately attached as they are to their community (e.g. Stedman 2003). This imposes an additional form of ontological insecurity onto exposed residents. Jackson (2011) coined the term dysplacement to underscore how pollution can transform formerly positive sensory experiences of place to experiences of profound alienation.

While not taking up the concept in detail, Edelstein describes the effects of living with toxic contamination as trauma, including abrupt disruptions to ‘ people’s way of living … their pattern of activities and the relationships, places and props needed to sustain these activities’; and the ‘unique individual interpretive frameworks and shared social paradigms used for understanding the world’ (Edelstein 2004, 27). Erikson (1998, 158, 1993) also referred to many indications of trauma among the victims of the flood in Buffalo Creek that resulted when a dam containing toxic slurry associated with mining operations burst, noting the flood’s profound and lasting effects: ‘people continued to experience that same aching sense of disorientation for months and even years after the flood’. That sense of lost agency can persist longer in the face of chronic contamination, which is furthermore not readily detectable.

Vyner (1988) has given the linkages between toxic contamination and trauma much closer attention than most. In particular, Vyner describes the unique implications of the invisible and ambiguous character of toxic contamination for victims. This ambiguity itself is threat-elevating and stress-producing. As Vyner notes, successful mastery over any threat involves gathering information that permits an effective response, and being able to respond accordingly, but in their attempts to cope with invisible contaminants, victims learn just how helpless they are; thus, threats become sources of trauma. With reference to several case studies, Vyner observes common responses to toxic contamination among victims that emanate from the growing realization that escape is impossible; responses which he refers to as hypervigilance, but his depiction resonates with Van der Kolk’s description of hyperarousal. These responses include preoccupation with the threat; continuous search for a way out of the situation; and excessive alertness to signs of threat – all of which consume large amounts of time and emotional energy. In essence, a person’s life becomes dominated by the contamination. Over time, Vyner observes growing ontological insecurity among victims, as they begin to question pre-existing beliefs about society, and about one’s personal life. The invisibility of contaminants is also a key factor in the delayed institutional responses by authorities, which only serves to exacerbate the traumatic effects among victims.

Fracking

Fracking – specifically horizontal, multi-stage hydraulic fracturing – involves the injection of water and chemicals under very high pressure into solid substrates, usually shale, in order to release the trapped oil or gas. Shale deposits are characteristically wide but shallow, necessitating a horizontal approach to the deposit. Drilling is also typically multi-stage, referring to the fact that several fracks take place from the same well site. The growing record of scientific studies of the impacts of fracking is compelling, raising concerns about air pollution and emissions of greenhouse gases (e.g. Roy, Adams, and Robinson 2014; Howarth, Santoro, and Ingraffea 2012); water pollution and large water withdrawals (e.g. Warner et al. 2013; Myers 2012; Rozel and Reaven 2012); earthquakes (e.g. Davies et al. 2013; Kim 2013); and human health threats (e.g. Kassotis et al. 2014; Colborn et al. 2011). One systematic study of the science concluded that if ‘done properly’, fracking can offer benefits (Sovacool), but others are more categorically sceptical (Szeman 2013; Rinaldi 2015). According to Rinaldi, a legal scholar, unconventional horizontal fracking should be considered an abnormally dangerous activity. The prevailing finding from a national study by the Canadian Water Network further raised concerns about the lack of knowledge about fracking impacts (Ryan et al. 2015).

Social-scientific literature on fracking is also emerging, with some studies focused on political and media discourse (Vasi et al. 2015; Upham et al. 2015; Hilson 2015; Hudgins and Poole 2014; Jaspal, Turner, and Nerlich 2014); state responses (Carter and Eaton 2016; Crowe, Ceresola, and Silva 2015a); civil society organizational responses (Neville and Weinthal 2016; Dodge 2015; Vesalon and Cretan 2015; Jalbert, Kinchy, and Perry 2014) and attitude studies (Crowe et al. 2015b; Boudet et al. 2016, 2014; Heuer and Lee 2014; Kriesky et al. 2013; Theodori 2009). A smaller set of studies focuses on social impacts. Among the most extensive studies to date, Gullion (2015) describes a very similar social context to the current study, other than its urban setting. Gullion catalogues social impacts and responses to fracking among white, conservative, upper middle class residents in an urban region in Texas who became ‘reluctant activists’, but also expressed deep anxiety over the uncertainty and invisibility of the contaminants to which they were exposed, and outrage at lack of acknowledgement of their concerns, leading to losses of recreancy and disruptions in family and community life. Perry (2012, 2013), in contrast, focuses on a rural Pennsylvania region subject to fracking, in which residents have been dealing with increases in traffic, noise, strangers in town, changes in the smell and appearance of drinking water, chemical spills and increased violence. Fracking often takes place in previously quiet, rural enclaves, and thus residents also complain that their community has become an industrial park, and ‘the place that was once their sanctuary became a disaster area that they sought asylum from’ (Jerolmack and Berman 2016, 199). In such communities, family history and attachment to land run deep, and ‘people have been forced to question what they thought they knew about how their communities function, how their governments operate, what the future will be like, and who their neighbors are and will be …a feeling of loss or fear of loss had begun to consume and alter the everyday lives’ (Perry 2012, 85).

Studies also note the intensity of community divisions that emerge (Jerolmack and Berman 2016; Perry 2012; Willow and Wylie 2014). Jerolmack and Berman (2016) argue that fracking is both uniquely intimate, and uniquely divisive, on two fronts. Since development often occurs in regions with depressed rural economies, many residents consider the impacts of development an acceptable price for the improvements in economic conditions, but other residents do not consider such costs acceptable. These divisions are further exemplified by the fact that some landowners receive rent for the facilities placed on their land, while others receive no income but nonetheless may be subject to the impacts of those facilities. Jerolmack and Berman (2016, 205) observe a consequent, general decline in communality: ‘neighbors and kin now routinely filter everyday interactions through legal-rational frameworks … norms of neighborliness give way to legal doctrine’.

Methods

In what follows, I offer the findings of a qualitative case study of the social impacts of fracking in a set of neighbouring farming communities in southern Alberta. I conducted 12 personal interviews in the summer of 2016 with individuals who have been impacted by fracking, identified initially through online sources and subsequently through snowball sampling. I generated a list of residents identified in local media sources, posted an invitation to participate on an email distribution list dedicated to residents concerned about fracking, and made contact with others through attendance at a local public meeting. I then asked participants if they had any friends or neighbours who might be willing to participate. Interviewees were all rural landowners, either farmers or retired acreage owners, meaning that while economic status varied, with some living on limited farming incomes and others who were quite wealthy, none would be considered poor. They came from different political backgrounds, although the majority were conservative, long-standing supporters of the Progressive Conservative Party, which reigned supreme in this province for over four decades, and retains strong rural support today, despite the election of a majority New Democratic Party to the Legislature in 2015. All interviewees were white and middle-aged; most were born in Alberta – some of whom were third- or fourth-generation farmers – and those who were not had been living here for several decades. Six interviewees were male and six female, and none had any history of resistance to fossil fuel development. One important element common among my interviewees was the fact that they have all chosen to speak out when there are many indications that the majority of individuals affected by fracking in rural Alberta have not. Many have signed non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) (discussed further below) that prevent them from doing so, others have quietly moved away and most of those who remain, according to my interviewees, are afraid.

The interviews were held in the participants’ homes, took anywhere from two to five hours, and were audio-recorded. They were open-ended, long-form and biographical in approach, focusing not solely on historical events, but the interviewee’s subjective experience of them (Bertaux 1981). The recordings were then transcribed and subjected to narrative and thematic analysis. A narrative is, simply stated, a story: a form of discourse that describes a personal interpretation of a series of events that unfold over time. As noted by Polkinghorne (1991‚ 135), ‘individuals construct private and personal stories linking diverse events of their lives into unified and understandable wholes. These are stories about the self’. Narrative analysis involves the study of these stories, viewed as important because they are social products describing the experiences of people in particular social, historical and cultural locations, and are valuable interpretive devices through which people view themselves and the social and natural worlds they inhabit (Reissman 2008; Chase 2008). To the extent information was available, accounts were also triangulated through the collection of media reports and other forms of secondary data describing the historical events discussed. For this paper, I selected from the data those narrative elements or themes shared by a number of interviewees that spoke to the traumatic nature of residents’ experiences.

Findings

This section is divided into several subsections, beginning with the pre-existing community attachment enjoyed by residents. Second, I share data that reflect how contamination emerged for residents, in ways that were experienced as trauma. I then share themes in the data that reflect the three manifestations of trauma in victims described earlier: helplessness, hyperarousal and ontological insecurity. Next, I present observations on the lack of ingredients psychoanalysts have identified as critical for trauma recovery, due in large part to the corrosion of community. Finally, I present observations on political mobilization.

Community attachment

While the narratives of interviewees were all unique, two particularly resonant themes emerged: strong place attachment with community and landscape, and close ties to the oil and gas industry. Many landowners expressed a deep personal knowledge, respect and awe for the ecological integrity of the landscape. Here is a snapshot from one interviewee (Interview 5):

The land that our ranch sits on here, if we look south we can see Montana, we can see a full range of the Rocky Mountains, on the north part of the ranch or the top of the ridge, we look north we can see the elevators at Olds, and Rocky Mountain House in that direction.

[Interviewer]: I take it you like it here.

Yeah we, extremely, we like it here. We’ve got all sorts of weather patterns that flow through here. Our ranch is sitting on a major migratory bird pattern from the west coast.

Another describes the response her family received when they bought their ranch 20 years ago: ‘It was unbelievable. We met probably 300 people in one night. And it was like “you gotta come to my house, this is who I am, and this is where I live…” I mean it was like open-armed welcome. So that’s the kind of community it is’ (Interview 2).

Signs of trauma

This landscape was disrupted abruptly by fracking, beginning around 2005. As Interview 1 stated simply, ‘life all got disrupted’. Many interviewees described similar experiences of their first introduction to fracking, in which landowners were given no information regarding this new form of extraction, and thus no warning of the disruptions that would ensue. When developers began construction of a well near her property, for example, Interview 7 was assured that ‘it’s just going to be a little pump jack … So I thought, whatever. I’ve got other issues’.

The expansion of fracking was so rapid that many residents felt blind-sided. As Interview 10 noted, ‘this area here is basically, conventional wells, no problem. But all of a sudden this coalbed methane stuff started coming in, …and it was, it hit so fast it was like the Blitzkrieg in the war, where, bang, before anybody knew what was going on’. Impacts emerged first in the form of traffic, noise and lighting at night. But then residents began to make other observations. One farmer (Interview 1) describes what he called ‘the most disturbing thing I’ve ever seen in my life’. His neighbour had invited him over to take a look at the water trough for his cattle. And, ‘he’s got no algae growing on his water troughs. … whatever is happening – I think it’s a biocide chemical – the simplest form of life isn’t able to grow on it. What the hell is that doing to the cows?’ Another rancher (Interview 5) described far more extensive impacts to the land and livestock:

Our ranch is about five miles long; it [has] affected the whole ranch. Every aspect. You notice it in the willow trees, notice it in the land, the livestock, wildlife, especially. When you don’t have any cow moose calves, … I’ve got fertility problems with my cow herds, the neighbours’ got fertility problems with their cow herds. We’ve seen problems in local crop production, big time.

Ecological degradation itself can constitute a form of trauma, amounting to the severance of intimate personal relationships of a landscape. Erikson (1993, 17) describes the intense feelings of loss that can result: ‘To lose a house or a set of possessions or even an important landmark can be disorienting in almost the same way that a death can be….. It is a source of identity. It is an extension of the self. And its loss can easily register in the mind like the loss of a life’. Here are the sentiments of Interview 4:

I absolutely love this place, it’s beyond beautiful, and it’s what we worked for for 35 years, to keep the farm going for, a lot of our personal funds that we had, and my funds from work, went toward keeping the farm going. And making it a good place to leave to our children. And you know, it’s absolutely appalling to me, its heartbreaking, what’s happened with fracking here. It’s destroyed a lot of hopes and dreams for the future, and a lot of our present happiness.

Three of my interviewees have sold their properties as a result of their experiences, and two others are currently awaiting the sale of their ranch. One woman (Interview 7) spoke at length about her loss after selling:

It’s absolutely heartbreaking. It is beyond heartbreaking. It is, I can’t even think of the word. They have robbed us so badly. Of our joy, in so many areas. … That land was part of where my husband grew up. And there’s these cliffs and everything that he played on when he was a child. And with our grandson, my husband loves birds, so he would carry our grandson on his shoulders to look inside nests. There’s so many memories out there. And now [husband] can’t even drive by. We don’t even drive by the property. It’s just too painful to do.

Some residents began to experience impacts of a far more personal nature, in the form of health complications, expressed by six of my interviewees. Although Vyner and Edelstein describe toxic contamination as typically ambiguous, at least for some residents it was anything but. Interviewee 11, a mother of three, describes her own family’s experience:

It was August when it started …I just thought it was harvest time. My eyes started getting really itchy, and my skin was getting dry and prickly, but you know when you’re working with dust and dirt, that happens. And so that’s what I assumed it was. I kept trying to, I would run, I would the water over my eyes, trying to get them to stop stinging, to get the dust out, and they just got worse and worse and worse. And then by Christmas, the whole family got burnt. All of us. And we had big lumps of skin coming off our scalps, and everyone was … cuz it was Christmas Eve and we were all having a shower one right after the other, to get to church and go to Christmas, right? And so the shower parade, and so every single one of us got burnt. And it was stinging. And everyone kept looking [at each other] and, ‘did that happen to you?’

Another interviewee (9) describes an experience shortly before his wife died due to health complications he believes were the result of exposure to air contaminants from improper flaring stacks upwind from their home:

I saw my family doctor on the Friday and he said you can carry on staying in the house but try and limit your driving past the wells to maybe once a week. [The couple decided not to stay anyway, so] … we came to pick up some stuff … we were intending to stay most of the day picking up stuff. Going through things and so on. Well, we came back together, [and] within two or three minutes my wife said ‘I can’t breathe. We’ve gotta go’. So the only thing I picked up was some money and that was it. We left within minutes. As we drove south, … by the time we got to [the highway] my wife said, ‘I can breathe again’.

Interview 4 experienced hair loss to such an extent that she refuses to leave the house without a hat or wig. She and her husband both have also received test results indicating abnormally high levels of uranium in their bodies, and lowered kidney function. She expressed an even greater emotional response to her knowledge of the health impacts to others. After sharing her awareness of children in her community who are suffering from ailments that appear to be related to nearby fracking, she says, ‘that breaks my heart, it really does’.

Such occurrences clearly elicit acute emotional and physical responses, but they also can be disruptive to daily living. As noted by Interview 2: ‘[now] our exciting life is going to a different doctor’s appointment. That’s the lifestyle we’ve got now’.

Helplessness

The experience of being rendered powerless through the loss of autonomy, dignity and sense of competence resonated throughout my interviews. For some, the health impacts themselves can evoke a sense of powerlessness, transcending into troubling questions of identity and self-worth. Interview 3, a life-long rancher who suffered from hydrogen sulphide poisoning, had this to say:

If I’m outside a lot I get dizzy. I have to come back inside. … I got no strength anymore … I can still do things, but not like I used to …I’ve always been strong. [But now] I’ve become useless.

Far more common was the eventual realization of powerlessness as victims’ efforts to have their concerns addressed by authorities were not fulfilled. According to Herman (1992), referring to victims of child abuse who learned that nobody would listen or believe them, the feeling of abandonment can be felt even more keenly than the abuse itself, leading to self-blame. All 12 interviewees had attempted to voice their concerns and provide their evidence to state representatives at one point or another, and all describe a remarkably consistent experience, marked by denial, disregard and patronization. Interviewee 4 shares a depiction that resonated with many: ‘the response has basically been a pat on the head, everything is fine, we have all these regulations, and everything’s great. … When they don’t want to answer they just don’t answer’. Such disregard can be incredibly painful. Interviewee 2, a conservative, religious woman, shared a particularly vivid experience of rejection:

We were told, point blank [by government employees], ‘you’re just in the way, an unfortunate part of this. We looked at weighing the benefit to the whole province, and yeah you’re going to have to suffer for that, but we have to look at the net benefit to the whole province. … you’re just in the way’.

The frustration felt by Interview 6, who says he has ‘spent tens of thousands of hours working on these issues’, was palpable:

There’s very little progress. It’s incredibly frustrating. And plus, nobody wants to hear about any of this. Anyone who’s talked to me for 10 minutes, is done with the issue. [They think] it’s too big. It’s too frustrating, it’s never, there’s never gonna be any change. The amount of work involved trying to get some traction, the amount of wasted energy, and wasted opportunities is enormous. The personal costs to relationships, spending time on this issue, particularly when there aren’t any results.

The sense of helplessness experienced by those seeking health care was particularly acute. Similar to findings by Auyero and Swistun (2008), medical personnel had little training in the detection and diagnosis of these kinds of health impacts. Interview 9’s efforts to seek assistance for his wife were particularly frustrating for him, so much so that, since her death, he says, ‘I didn’t want to go and see another doctor’, despite the fact that he too endured the health complications of chemical poisoning.

Interview 7 expressed a similar lack of confidence in health authorities:

Gee isn’t that strange, we’re all getting cancers. That are rare. And you try and talk to, my oncologist is the sweetest person in the whole world, but you try and talk to your family doctor about these things, and they don’t even know what fracking is much less that they would ever, how can they test you? When they don’t know what chemicals they’re testing you for?

Hyperarousal

Nearly all Interviewees expressed some degree of hyperarousal. Interviewees spoke of nightmares, and acute levels of fear, despite the fact that industry activities were in a lull at the time of our interviews, based on anticipation that drilling would inevitably ramp up again in the future (it has). Said Interview 3, ‘You don’t gain that security back. You don’t trust it; you’re always in doubt. And you’re being very, very cautious…. It never leaves your mind’. Most Interviewees committed large amounts of time and energy on identifying and attempting to understand the sources of contamination and their impacts, searching for a resolution that never materialized. Interviewees described spending countless hours for as long as 10 years doing research, communicating to authorities and speaking out. According to Interview 7, ‘I found out so much information, I learned everything. I know every part of a pump jack, fracking, I know everything about it. … I went through, on the ERCB (the provincial energy regulator) site, all their Directives. Do you know how long [that] takes?’

Many also developed a general distrust of others but particularly authorities, and an elevated sensitivity to signs of threat. Interview 7 described what sounded like a new variation of Neighbourhood Watch: neighbours on the look out for and document observed poor company behaviour. Residents also purchased their own water-testing equipment, and Geiger counters. Some also described a new alertness to signs of poor health in others, recognizing similarities of symptoms, and collecting news of illnesses, deaths and causes. Noted Interview 4, ‘This is something that we are hearing more and more. A lady who was across the road, with a number of wells, died recently of rare cancer. It’s happening all over the place. A boy who was a good friend of our son’s, his father died of a rare cancer, just a couple of years ago. We’ve heard of so many neighbours, particularly ones that we know are really downwind directly from some of these wells’. Since his wife’s death Interview 9, a former energy industry consultant, has devoted his time to research on the health conditions reported by victims:

I’m carrying on this research because I think that, firstly I don’t want my wife to have died for nothing, and secondly, for myself, I wanted to find out how to not die, and, but more importantly in some ways is if [I don’t do] this research, who in the hell will? There’s almost nobody out there’s who’s been in the oil and gas business, who has actually had exposure to toxic chemicals, who knows what its like. And there’s so few doctors who have any training at all, or knowledge, in what to do about toxic chemicals. … And these people are going around saying, it’s safe, it’s safe’. And they get away with it. And the doctors don’t have a clue what to look for.

Interview 2 spoke of ‘some of the stupid kind of paranoia things that get to haunt you. I now carry in the glove compartment of our vehicle, a paper of the UN numbers that will be on these trucks, [identifying] what they are hauling. Because we have been lied to so many times, about what the trucks were hauling in here, and now I can see, that one is hauling diesel, that one is hauling fracked oil. And like it starts to consume so many things around you’. This interviewee also expressed previously un-experienced levels of distrust, not just of those who were culpable, also a more generalized distrust of everyone, affecting her engagement with community.

Ontological insecurity

Ontological security in southern Alberta was previously founded on a sense of belonging in close-knit rural communities, stable agrarian landscapes and in life’s routines, positive sentiments towards the energy industry, and trust in authorities, namely those representing the Progressive Conservative Party. Perhaps, one first indication of the degree of pre-existing ontological security is the fact that most interviewees did not initially attribute emerging land and health impacts to oil and gas activities. The allegation that the foundation of Alberta’s prosperity could be the source of harm was ideologically inconceivable. And perhaps empirically so as well: oil and gas drilling had been going on for 100 years after all, and rural residents grew up around it.

Even when the connection to oil and gas activities was made, many interviewees expressed confidence in the structural integrity of Alberta’s political system. Growing recognition in the fallacy of this belief was a particularly hard blow for many interviewees, whose conservative and traditional worldviews were premised on such beliefs. The fact that what they felt was solid proof – water quality tests, Geiger counter readings, even medical records – held no more validity than anecdotes was particularly jarring to their sensibilities. More than one interviewee exclaimed with incredulity, ‘we have the data!’ The following conversation segments illustrate the emergence of ontological insecurity:

We think we live in this wonderful democracy and there’s all these checks and balances, and all these sorts of outlets so we can engage in the political system, if something was wrong we’d be able to solve it. But when you pursue those avenues, that’s when you realize the limitations involved in them. (Interview 6)

At one point in time I would have trusted this government 100% with absolutely everything. But over this last issue, I lost all respect for all government. (Interview 3)

I believed all the propaganda! I believed, that they genuinely, well of course, they would take care of the water! What kind of fools wouldn’t take care of the water?! Why would you sacrifice groundwater?! That’s, to me,incred … I just can’t imagine them doing that. That’s just so stupid. Obviously we need groundwater. Out in the prairies? Like, where else are we gettin’ water from? (Interview 11)

On a deeper level, many of the expressions of ontological insecurity were in reference to the abrupt and yet subtle changes to the natural environment: that the clean air and water and productive agricultural landscape that were such highly valued elements of their life world and livelihood represented something completely different, even foreign, after contamination occurred. Interview 2 reflects on her changing view of the landscape: ‘a lot of people still don’t see it, they’ll say, “oh you have such a beautiful place.” Yeah, it does look beautiful, but gee…’ Interview 3, her husband, chimes in: ‘My dream was… that this land, this place, this was going to be I guess a family legacy. [begins to cry] And now it’s just a disaster’.

Community corrosion: missing ingredients for recovery

Several factors prevented the re-establishment of safety, acknowledgement and mourning, and reconnection with ordinary life, necessary to recovery from trauma. Foremost among these were the corrosion of community. When approaching authorities, many interviewees experienced ever more derogatory responses, including attempts to blame the landowners themselves for the water contamination due to poor management – an allegation particularly offensive among proud family farmers. Such experiences were not restricted to interactions with authorities. Many interviewees who shared their concerns with family and friends experienced similar treatment, including ostracism and hostility from within the community that had served as their primary source of social support their entire lives. Interviewees described how former friends would refuse to sit next to them at meetings, and were called names. Interview 12, a fourth-generation farmer and mother of two, remembers being called many things, but she says ‘single mom came up a lot’. My conversation with Interviewee 11, speaking about her daughter, was especially touching:

She felt terrified to be in the world. She said, ‘I discovered that everyone I trusted doesn’t really care. What are we gonna do mom? They’re gonna kill us! And she just felt terrified. Who was she going to trust? … And she didn’t understand why her Daddy wouldn’t support me, because she could see the water, she got burnt in the shower, … and it’s like ‘I don’t understand, why do the people who love me, why are they not helping us?’ And so she felt abandoned and absolutely terrified, and she has lost all kinds of trust in this world.

Interview 2 was quite reflexive about the ultimate consequences of such divisions in rural agrarian communities: ‘you destroy community and you destroy people. You need that community to keep doing whatever it is that hits people at a certain time’.

Some suggested the introduction of community conflict was a deliberate tactic on the part of oil and gas companies. While this allegation cannot be corroborated, it does seem clear that conflict is the outcome of the regular practices of companies. Some landowners get well leases and the rents they generate and others not. And when impacts described by victims become impossible to deny, it has become standard corporate practice to pay compensation to a victimized landowner, in exchange for that landowner signing NDA, colloquially known among residents as a ‘shut-up clause’: the signatory agrees to never speak of the infractions upon them. One interviewee spoke of neighbours who had signed NDAs, who were also instructed to never speak to certain neighbours again – those speaking out about fracking.

Mobilization

While all interviewees expressed incredible courage in speaking publicly – and to me – about their experiences, only three attempted to pursue collective mobilization. Interview 7, who made the greatest efforts at mobilization among my interviewees but eventually gave up, repeatedly expressed dismay at the failure of her neighbours to respond in the way she expected: ‘[other affected neighbours] who are supposed to be the ones who care about all this, stand up! Why aren’t you standing up?’

Such community reactions are tragic but not surprising. As mentioned above, many impacted residents have quite literally had their political rights stripped upon signing NDA. Most landowners in this region also have family members and/or friends who work directly for the industry. This is not solely the expression of economic dependency, however. Numerous other studies have highlighted the tendency for rural communities to embody pro-industry identities and ideologies, even in the wake of major environmental health problems (Greenberg 2017; Malin 2015; Messer, Shriver, and Adams 2015). Messer and colleagues (2015) suggest that lack of mobilization might indicate efforts to protect collective identity. That oil and gas development could be harmful would certainly challenge the collective identity of these communities; indeed, it challenged the identity of many interviewees. The political-economic context of rural Alberta thus provides an additional hindrance to mobilization. Much has been written about the political-economic logics of petro-states, encompassing interdependent state and petroleum industry institutions (e.g. Karl 1997), of which Alberta is one, given oil and gas represent 25–30% of its GDP in any given year. As with other petro-states, quiescence is extracted by the power elite through patronage. Citizens face several forms of discouragement for political engagement, while being repeatedly bombarded with messages that the petro-state takes care of you.

Less has been discussed of the potential intersection between trauma and mobilization. First, a supportive community – that most critical of resources that supports recovery that was excised from the lives of many victims – is also key to political engagement. On a deeper level, the political context just described is in many respects analogous to relations catalogued by many psychologists between abused and abusers who are in positions of authority, explaining why victims – even intelligent and capable adults – may fail to resist, or remove themselves from, their plight. Gendreau (2016, 707) could be describing the loss of agency discussed by trauma researchers when he states that,

severe environmental degradation, both by itself and in conjunction with social and political conditions, can disrupt how people understand themselves as efficacious members of polities whose interests and values are worthy of consideration by others. Effectively, this is a denial of political agency, as agential control is inevitably compromised when a person fails to see herself as an agent.

Discussion

This study has illustrated that toxic contamination events generate experiences of trauma that are similar to other events identified as traumatic. My interviewees, all victims of contamination associated with fracking in southern Alberta, experienced three key indications of trauma, including loss of agency, hyperarousal and ontological insecurity. Interviewees described feelings of helplessness, persistent fears of future exposure and distrust and complete upheaval in their beliefs that life gets better, neighbours take care of each other, our government takes care of us and the energy industry brings prosperity. The sociopolitical context served to amplify the scale of trauma experienced, as authorities deeply immersed in Alberta’s petrochemical economy failed to respond in a manner expected by the victims, and the local cultural and economic connections to the energy industry interacted to facilitate the corrosion of community. Not only did government and industry not come to victims’ aid, they were revealed to be the perpetrators. Residents were silenced, ostracized and invalidated by authorities, community and even family members in some cases, amounting to full-scale betrayal.

This study also revealed how specific features of this toxic contamination event intersected with the trauma experiences of residents in ways that were not only distinct from other forms of trauma, but also distinct from other cases of toxic contamination analysed by environmental sociologists. First, the contamination sits somewhere between ambiguous and vivid. The sources of airborne and waterborne contamination include chemicals that are not visible, and their impacts on health are not fully understood. Yet the victims described observations of direct and acute impacts, including several forms of visual, medical and scientific documentation. The fact that authorities nonetheless denied the claims of residents was received as a particular affront to their sensibilities, adding intense anger to the host of emotional impacts experienced. Second, in the case described, the contamination was not the result of a single errant or negligent act to be remedied, but rather the new normal, akin to living with one’s abuser with no escape options. The routinization of an industrial technology associated with inherent hazards translates into the routinization of harm. This is neither an acute, discrete event like the Buffalo Creek flood, nor a chronic technological disaster that unfolds as a result of a single accident or act of negligence, like the contaminated landfill at Love Canal, or the mine fire in Centralia. This is contamination as the new normal of non-conventional fossil fuel industries, and this realization, perhaps more than anything, is linked to victim’s feelings of helplessness, hyperarousal and ontological insecurity.

How might the experience of trauma have implications for political mobilization to confront the source of hazard? A trauma lens may well shed light on why political mobilization in response to such events is by no means inevitable, and this is an area in which future research is certainly warranted. Based on what numerous studies of trauma victims report regarding personal impacts, one might conclude that trauma is uniquely capable of compromising the capacity of individuals to pursue collective mobilization. Social engagement, not to mention political engagement, begins from a personal foundation of stable beliefs, trust and efficacy – the very qualities that are eradicated by trauma. Perhaps more extraordinary than the fact that few victims in southern Alberta have spoken out is the fact that any have done so at all. When asked why, Interview 12 had this to say:

I still have freedom of speech, and dammit, I’ll say it. … It’s a true story that, should, still pop its head up once in a while. … At the end of the day, as we get older, what have we got? All we got is our stories.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Centre for Community Disaster Research, Mount Royal University.

Notes on contributors

Debra J. Davidson

Debra J. Davidson is Professor of Environmental Sociology at the University of Alberta. Her research and teaching focuses on social aspects of climate change, energy and food systems. Recent publications include articles in Nature Climate Change, Acta Sociologica, and Agriculture and Human Values. She is co-editor of the forthcoming Oxford Handbook on Energy and Society, with Matthias Gross. She receieved her Ph.D. from University of Wisconson-Madison in 1998.